Greg Fleet with Mick Moriarty

Smouldering jazz doesn’t often go hand in hand with stand-up comedy. In the blue smoke of a darkened room, Mick Moriarty’s wandering plucked bass sends stifled waves of panic through a confused Friday night audience. Expectantly, they turn to the threateningly attired Greg Fleet, hoping that the laughs are going to come from somewhere.

Leaning unstably towards a mic, Fleet embarks upon a dark tale of love and death in interwar America. Interspersed with Moriarty’s gruff and moody refrain, you’d be excused for wondering what the hell you had just paid to see. That is until you start to listen closer to the lyrics, entirely comprised of hilarious one-liners. The ingenious song spreads its humour like a Chinese whisper, creating a room full of well whetted comic appetites. But regrettably, the stand-up that Fleet employs to fill the gaps between songs over the next hour is far below the bar set by his first utterances.

Stories that go nowhere and punch lines that lack originality constitute a massive let down for the previously slobbering crowd. But with songs about tree frogs, Australia’s national past times (racism and wife beating) and a grand finale on the relative dangers of emphysema, septicaemia and leukaemia, the audience isn’t left wholly dissatisfied.